PRISONERS: Homecoming

Across West Germany, newspapers and radio
stations broke the news with one simple phrase: "Sie kommen!" (They are
coming!). All Germans knew what it meant. Eight years after war's end,
the U.S.S.R. was sending home "the last" of the Germans still held in
Russia as prisoners of war.

Great crowds set off for Herleshausen, a border village where the
Russians would deliver the prisoners. It was an odd, silent
pilgrimagegovernment officials, clerics, rich Germans from the
cities, farmers in their Sunday best. All wore the strained expression
of desperate hope.